A concept near and dear to the hard heart of Aisle Say, my having produced Delaware's Best of Broadway for 15 years. My concept was Broadway; theirs is Hollywood's greatest movie musicals. The entertainment mission is similar; to stage the greatest show stopping numbers from each genre.

Greer Firestone

HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD - DuPONT THEATRE Mar 8 - Mar 10 4 shows

A concept near and dear to the hard heart of Aisle Say, my having produced Delaware's Best of Broadway for 15 years. My concept was Broadway; theirs is Hollywood's greatest movie musicals. The entertainment mission is similar; to stage the greatest show stopping numbers from each genre.

This production company has chosen some of the greatest. 14 singer/actor/dancers accompanied by a live band going through the decades with tunes from "Singing In the Rain", "Titanic", "Mama Mia", Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock" (a production number that most definitely was the inspiration for MTV), "Grease", "Beauty and the Beast", "Dirty Dancing" and "Hairspray". 30 tunes in all including an homage to Glenn Miller.

Classic film footage is part of the spectacle.

If "Jailhouse Rock", "Grease" and "Dirty Dancing" is included there must be some dynamite dancers!

The DuPont Theatre celebrates its Centennial season. It was once a 'tryout town' for Broadway musicals. The companies began their trek in CT and then came to Wilmington to gauge audience reaction for the (hopeful) eventual Broadway run. Aisle Say met Richard Rogers when he was here with REX in 1976. The discriminating Wilmington audiences were a precursor to those in NYC. That show went over like Joe Biden addressing the NRA.

Friday and Saturday at 8pm. Saturday and Sunday matinee at 2pm

DuPontTheatre.com 656.4401 800.338.0881

UD REP ENSEMBLE - HAMLET Feb 28 - Mar 17

Murder, madness and melancholy ...and we are not referring to Oscar Pistorius.

Four years into their fabulous run of the world's classics, UD Rep Ensemble stages arguably Shakespeare's greatest play in our state's declared "Year of The Bard"

The title character, reeling from the death of his father and the too soon re-marriage of his mother, concludes there is something 'rotten in Denmark'.

During that age, dramatic convention suggested dramas were expected to be propelled by action, not character. With HAMLET, Will was the innovator not only in plot and language but through the various soliloquies he created, the audience now understood motives and thoughts.

It is one of the most quoted works in the English language. There are 208 quotations alone in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Some of the all time great lines: ..."get thee to a nunnery". Nunnery was Shakespearean shorthand for brothel. (Many of my former dates have revised that by suggesting to me the phrase 'get thee to a monastery').

Others include "Alas, poor Yorick, we knew him well", "neither a borrower or a lender be", "to be or not to be", among legions of others.

HAMLET was a banquet of psychoanalysis for Freud...with numerous Oedipal references. All students of literature - and consummate acting - should attend.

Rep.Udel.edu 831.2204

LOVE, LOSS AND WHAT I WORE - DELAWARE THEATRE CO. Mar 6 - Mar 17

Written by uma universale playwright, essayist, satirist/philosopher Nora Ephron, this show is billed as 'an intimate collection of short stories'. It won a NY Drama Desk Award.

Ephron is more celebrated for writing two of the all time fave chic flicks: WHEN HARRY MET SALLY and SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE.

She was married to Carl Bernstein (remember Deep Throat?). When she discovered his affair, Ephron was not amused. This was the inspiration for the movie HEARTBURN (Nicholson & Meryl). One of the quotes in the movie about the cheater; "he was capable of having sex with a Venetian blind."

The 5 woman cast has theatrical cred; something that is becoming a habit with the new DTC producer. Anyone with a family knows Sonia Manzano of "Sesame Street". Anyone over 45 remembers quite fondly Dawn Wells of "Gilligan's Island". Karyn Quakenbush played opposite Tom Wopat (Dukes of Hazard) on Broadway in "Annie Get Your Gun".